We Built Our Foundations On Sweat And Blood
by MintSauce
Summary: He's going to look like crap in the morning. So is Mickey. Neither of them care. (I'll be honest, this snowballed!)


They don't fuck.

They don't fuck, but in the dark Ian presses his mouth against Mickey's, tasting blood and sweat and the sharp tang of whiskey. Every other kiss and every five breaths, Mickey complains about his tooth. Ian feels like he's being stabbed with every inhale.

The blood is dried into Ian's hair, sticking it to his scalp at awkward angles. His skin itches where it's dried like cannibal camouflage paint. Mickey's fingers burn where they push under his shirt, his cracked and chewed nails digging into bruises. Bruises that Ian can feel blooming along his spine, swelling his eye even as he lies there.

He's going to look like shit in the morning.

So is Mickey.

Neither of them care.

Not when they're alive. Not when each painful breath feels a thousand times lighter, a thousand times _freer_ than it ever would have done before. Not when Mickey's lying next to him on the bed, face tucked into Ian's neck because, "_Fuck off being the little spoon, faggot."_ Not when he knew that that was exactly where he knew Mickey wanted to be.

"Fuck you doin'?" Mickey asked when Ian turned in his arms.

He pressed another kiss to Mickey's mouth, running his tongue over the cut in his lip until Mickey opened up with a hiss. He slipped his fingers into the matted hair behind Mickey's ear, moving closer with a moan. He wanted to crawl under Mickey's skin and live there, curl around Mickey's heart like some fucking dragon guarding its hoard. Because he's never seen anything as beautiful as the inside of Mickey's soul. No matter how gay, it's true.

And Mickey's always been fragile. They're both broken. They were both cracked down the middle long before they met. And sure, maybe they each drown the sledgehammer home and shattered the other forever; but Mickey was the only one that would ever have the glue. With each kiss and each look he was patching Ian together and fuck it, so what if he was putting him together backwards? Ian had never worked right the original way in the first place.

Mickey's fingers curl around the shape of Ian's hipbone, careful of his ribs as their noses bump together, as his tongue glides over Ian's.

Ian can't stop remembering the hitch in Mickey's voice. The look on his face when he came out. When he did what even Ian hadn't even done. He'd looked so open, so insecure. He'd been a raw flame, just waiting for that gust of wind and he'd never looked more beautiful. He'd only proved why Ian could never walk away. Why he would always stand there through the sleet and the wind and the shit storm, his hands cupped around Mickey and his mouth pressed against Mickey's own.

They fit together like two puzzle pieces, the edges bent and frayed. But they were seamless.

"What?" Mickey asks again.

Ian hadn't realised he'd been just looking at him.

"I love you," Ian says.

Mickey blinks. And there is that crack in his voice again. "Yeah, uh – m-me too, you know," he says.

Ian can't help but grin like the goddamn Cheshire cat. Even when Mickey prods him in the ribs and makes him wheeze. He kisses the grimace off Ian's face straight after.

Just like he always does. Just like he always will.

Through all the shit. Through Ian's diagnosis. Through all the trial pills and the tears and the hatred. Through all the screaming and the blood and the walking away.

Mickey just grips Ian's fingers too tight, sneering into his face and looking one second away from throwing a punch.

And there's always going to be a scar on Mickey's lip and another under his eye. Just like Ian will always have a white line on his back and a hitch in his breath when he runs. But it's just proof. Proof that they're in this, that they've both left their mark and that they're taken. And that neither of them ever really left, even when they walked away.

Even after a fight, after years and when he's sitting in a bar, Ian will just snort when his work friend says, "We should go out." Because, "I'm taken," he says and he means it. Even if he and Mickey screamed at each other for three hours the night before because Mickey drank the last of the juice again and Ian used all the hot water before he went to work. Even if Ian walked out the house with an insult burning the back of his throat, not even looking back.

"Damn right he's fucking taken," Mickey sneers, shouldering his way into the booth and glaring at Ian's colleagues across the table. He's covered in dirt and what looks like oil, his high-vis vest draped over his bare skin. _"It's hot a fuckin' balls, Gallagher, and fuck them if they say it ain't a shirt, this ain't a five star fuckin' restaurant."_

He slams his hand down onto the table in front of Ian, the pills rattling in their container. "You fuckin' forgot these this mornin' when you stormed out like some goddamn faggot drama queen."

And Ian pops the cap and swallows one down, thinking about how he didn't even have to ask Mickey to bring them. Thinking about how Mickey would have grabbed them on his way out, kept them in his pocket all day because he knows Ian's schedule as well as he does. Thinking about how he really can't do any fucking better.

"And here," Mickey says, the juice sloshing in the bottle as it too slams down on the table.

Ian's colleagues jump.

"You can shower first," he says in return, leaning close enough that he can feel Mickey's breath hit his cheek.

"Or you can shower with me and save both of us the fuckin' trouble," Mickey points out, rolling his eyes when Ian ducks in for a kiss. He runs his tongue over the scar on Mickey's lip and Mickey shudders. He's probably thinking about what else Mickey can do with his tongue.

"Me too," Ian says, pushing his beer into Mickey's waiting palm. He's got juice now instead. It probably sounds like a question to anyone else and maybe it is. Maybe he'll always need to hear that confirmation to really believe it.

Mickey doesn't even bother rolling his eyes anymore. "Yeah," he says, "Me too."

Because they'll always be different. They'll always be that little bit too fucked up. Whether it's caked in blood and squeezed onto a single mattress, ribs aching and tooth cracked (_Which it totally wasn't by the way, they found out later)_, their scars already forming. Whether it was there or in their own apartment, with the pills on the table and the guns in the cabinet, with the leaking sink and the squeaky floorboards; with Mickey's socks littering the floor and Ian's books propping up the coffee table.

Either way and no matter where they are, no other shit matters but them.


End file.
